Climate Change, Extreme Weather Events, Food Security, and Nutrition: Evolving Relationships and Critical Challenges

Climate change, also known as global warming, poses significant challenges for both the planet and humanity. With further warming, every region across the world is projected to increasingly experience concurrent and multiple changes in climate, compounding overall risk. Long-term climate change and near-term extreme weather events have multiple negative effects on food security, diets, and nutrition via complex, multidirectional pathways through food, health, water, and social protection systems. However, measuring climate-attributable malnutrition impacts, especially among the most vulnerable populations, remains challenging. Changes in climate across a range of geographies have been modeled, projected, and observed showing detrimental associations with dietary and nutrition outcomes, particularly undernutrition. Many of these undernourished populations are climate vulnerable due to a variety of determinants challenging their ability to adapt to impending risks. While nutrition integration within climate adaptation plans have lagged, there is momentum for robust collaboration between climate and nutrition communities to fill data gaps that are critical for joint decision-making.